Salt Lake City Based Photographer Timbra Wiist owns/operates Landslide Photography & Photographs the Journey of Motherhood (see bottom of page or sidebar for more info. . .depending on what this blog is choosing to do for the day).

Saturday, July 27, 2013

The Breastfeeding Bible

breastfeedingcafecarnivalWelcome to The Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival!



This post was written as part of the Breastfeeding Cafe's Carnival. For more info on the Breastfeeding Cafe, go to www.breastfeedingcafe.wordpress.com. For more info on the Carnival or if you want to participate, contact Claire at clindstrom2 {at} gmail {dot} com. Today's post is about your go-to breastfeeding resource. Please read the other blogs in today's carnival listed below and check back for more posts July 22nd through August 4th!







I didn't really have need for "help" when I was breastfeeding, but I had some go-to resources for breastfeeding from the start. During a two week stay with my parents just before leaving the country (5 weeks before my daughter was born in that country), I picked up a few resource books from the book store. They would keep me occupied for the long flight, the next five weeks of waiting and hopefully be helpful in answering some of the questions I wasn't sure how to get answers for, once I moved away (on a local level anyway). I happened to pick up the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding as one of those books. I guess that pretty much sealed my fate :)

The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding was honestly a bit of a difficult read. The baby in the book is always referred to as "he" so as to distinguish mother from child, since "she" is always used for the mother. This was hard because I knew I was having a girl, odd thing, I know, but it was just a simple thing that made the book feel more distant for me. It's also a resource guide more than anything and eventually sections came that I wasn't super interested in, since I was reading it before my baby had even come along. But this book became a resource guide for all of my questions for the next several years. It answered many questions for me and was the voice of LLL in my home. It was the single most important book I read about breastfeeding. Later I would become a La Leche League Leader, and we refer to this book as our Breastfeeding Bible.

When we moved back to the US (much sooner than planned) and my daughter was only 6 months old, I knew I needed a support system or at least to make some friends! And when you've been transplanted to a new place where you know very few people, but now have a baby, it's easy to know that the place to look for friends is somewhere where people will have babies, a bonus was somewhere where there would be like-minded moms. I visited a La Leche League meeting two months later, and that was all because The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding is a La Leche League publication, so it had resource information on how to find meetings. I'd never even heard of LLL before opening that book. I didn't know that within that book I'd find a link to one-to-one resource and personal relationships that have now lasted years. I didn't know that picking up that one book on breastfeeding would set the course for my mothering decisions, my future friendships and even a (current) lifetime of volunteering to support other women who are breastfeeding.

The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding was the single most go-to resource I could have ever stumbled upon!






Here are more post by the Breastfeeding Cafe Carnival participants! Check back because more will be added throughout the day.

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